Recipes with Anchovies

In this classic dish, cold sliced veal is served under a blanket of creamy tuna mayonnaise.

Chilled Sea Urchin and Farro Pasta

Deviled eggs get an update with white anchovies and masago arare, Japanese rice cracker beads that mimic caviar.

Anchovy paste adds umami punch to an elemental garlic-and-butter sauce that’s perfect tossed with a thin pasta like spaghetti.

A tangy paste of green olives, anchovies, and capers is the perfect topping for mild and tender filet of sole.

Use salt-packed anchovy fillets to make this antipasto from Luciano De Giacomi’s Nonna Genia’s Classic Langhe Cookbook (Astilibri, 1982).

This classic salad is easy to make from scratch at home. Get the recipe for Caesar Salad »

A French bistro staple, this provençal salad combines tuna, olives, cucumber, green beans, anchovies, and other spring vegetables for a filling and protein-rich meal.

This flavorful mix of broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, and potatoes is braised in olive oil that’s been infused with rosemary, chile flakes, lemon, and anchovies. Get the recipe for Olive Oil-Braised Vegetables »

The leaves of cavolo nero (also known as Tuscan kale, Lacinato kale, or Dinosaur kale) cook slowly into a luscious heap when braised whole.

Tossed with a garlicky anchovy dressing, this vegetable dish is a great foil for rich pastas and roasted meats. Get the recipe for Chicory in Anchovy Sauce »

Capers, tuna, and anchovies balance the heat in these small, stuffed cherry peppers.

Based on the classic French caramelized-onion tart with olives and anchovies, these little two-bite hors d’oeuvres pack a flavorful punch.

This southern French tart takes its name from pissala, a pungent anchovy paste that gives the flatbread its distinctive flavor.

This Italian classic, whose Italian name means warm bath, provides the perfect counterpoint to raw vegetables. This recipe is based on one in Essentials of Classic Italian Cuisine (Knopf, 1992) by Marcella Hazan.

This flavorful pesto from Sicily is traditionally served with homemade busiate, a spiral-shaped pasta; you can substitute dried fusilli in a pinch.

Italy’s puttanesca sauce, briny with anchovies, olives, and capers, pairs well with swordfish or any other meaty fish.

Capers and anchovies lend briny depth to this parsley sauce, which is fantastic tossed with grilled or boiled vegetables, and with rich fish like mackerel.

Based on a dish served at Birrificio Italiano, a brewery and restaurant in Italy’s Lombardy region, this puttanesca-style pasta sauce is enriched with Bibock, the brewery’s bock-style beer.

Salsa verde, a Mediterranean condiment flavored with anchovies, capers, and herbs, partners nicely with seared, medium-rare lamb chops.

At Savron, a restaurant in Trieste, Italy, they roast cuts of pork and veal and then pave a serving plate with cold thin slices of each and slathers on these two flavorful sauces. At home, use the sauces to dress up leftover meats—pork or veal or a combination of the two. The color of the anchovy sauce will vary according to the variety of anchovies used; plump, rosy ones, which are usually packed in glass jars, tend to yield a thicker, more richly hued sauce.

This recipe for mussels steamed with wine is based on one from Resto, a Belgian restaurant in New York City.

The versatile sauce used here comes from Rogers Gray Italian Country Cook Book (Random House, 1995), by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray, chef-owners of London’s acclaimed (and very Italian) River Cafe. It can be used not only as a dip for radicchio and other vegetables, but also spooned over grilled or roasted fish or lamb. Rogers and Gray recommend green Tuscan olive oil.

Sauce vierge (literally, virgin sauce, a reference to its uncooked character) belongs to a family of fresh French Mediterranean sauces that differ greatly from the rich, stock-based sauces commonly associated with classical French cooking. Also called green sauce, sauce aux herbes, and sauce verte, it is usually a piquant mixture of olive oil, herbs, mustard, capers, olives, and other aromatics. In this version, chiles add a spicy, new-world dimension. Besides accompanying steak, this sauce goes well with grilled or sauteed pork chops or tuna. Get the recipe for Grilled Steak with Sauce Vierge »

Food fried a la romana (in egg batter)—squid is often cooked this way in Spain—has a softer, moister crust than that fried in eggless batter.